On Sarpy Creek

"On Sarpy Creek" is a deeply moving family saga about a small Montana farming community in the decade after World War I. The simple, unadorned style and strong story make "On Sarpy Creek" a true page-turner about life and love. More

A lost book so wonderful it is like finding buried treasure.

"On Sarpy Creek" is a deeply moving family saga about a small Montana farming community in the decade after World War I. Many readers consider it a small masterpiece, yet this book was "lost" for decades before being recently republished.

The simple, unadorned style and strong story make "On Sarpy Creek" a true page-turner about life and love.

Praise for the new edition:

"An intriguing story (that guarantees) hours of escape. The characters are well developed, interesting and fallible, and the ensemble makes for delightful reading." —Big Sky Journal

"Illuminating and compelling." —Missoulian

"An epic Montana saga." —Helena Independent Record

"A friend of mine just gave me the novel 'On Sarpy Creek' three days ago and I've read it almost straight through. I want to thank you for republishing it. It's a terrific book, maybe the best Montana novel I've ever read, and you bringing it back is just a real public service." —From an anonymous phone call to the publisher soon after this edition was published.

"What gives (this) novel charm is the simple authenticity of the emotions, the splendid reality of the interlocking lives, and the moments of quietly told but intense drama." —Bernard DeVoto, "The Journals of Lewis and Clark, Across the Wide Missouri"

This edition features an afterward about the author. This novel is his only known work.

Not much is known about Ira Stephens Nelson, author of “On Sarpy Creek”.

What is known is that he spent some time living in Montana as a foster child. It is possible that he lived in the Billings area, where Sarpy Creek is located. (Today there is a highway exit off the interstate highway indicating the location of Sarpy Creek.) He wrote his book in the midst of the Depression, and it was originally published in 1938. Perhaps because the country was shortly swept up in World War II, there was never a second press run and the book soon fell into obscurity. However, an excerpt from the book appears in Joseph Kinsey Howard’s 1949 edition of “Montana Margins: A State Anthology” along with a glowing review of the book.

It is not known what Ira Nelson did with his life, or where he went, or who he knew. The facts are skeletal: he traveled a lot. He married a woman who had three daughters. He died in Georgia, where he was the caretaker and maintenance man for an estate. He never published any other works, though his stepdaughters say he tended to write copiously.

A few years ago, Scott Mainwaring was researching a literary project when he happened across a review of “On Sarpy Creek” which was printed in a teacher’s magazine published in the 1950s. The review sparked his interest, and he found an original copy of the book at the Montana Historical Society. At that point, he became interested in republishing the book and began to search for Ira Nelson in order to ask permission. Several years passed without turning up news of Ira. Then, he and his literary-minded friends hired a private detective. The detective located a recent death certificate for Ira. Ira had been alive during the prolonged search, but died in 1994 just before contact was made. Tragically, he never saw the republication of his book.

His stepdaughters, when contacted, never even knew he had ever written a book.